


Amour Fou

by indiachick



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Fantasy, M/M, Magical Realism, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 09:29:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1545938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiachick/pseuds/indiachick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sometimes you catch glimpses of places that don't exist</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amour Fou

A tall stranger was the first customer at the Java Shack every day, and the girl behind the window only looked up when she heard him stifle a yawn.

“You look like crap,” she said, and pushed a steaming cup of espresso through the window. “And maybe this is weird, coming from an employee here, but you drink too much coffee.”

He smiled, tired, but with a flash of dimples. “Not enough coffee in the world.”

“Graveyard shifts?” she asked, smiling sympathetically. The guy always wanted the blackest stuff—‘ _black as a coalmine'_ , he’d said once—and she’d guessed he was maybe a student, some academic type, a writer. Definitely had the giant geeky glasses and bookish cuteness and everything.

“Something like that,” he said. He grabbed his cup with ink-stained fingers and then hesitated, just watching her for an endless minute. “You ever been on the 6 train at night?”

“Yeah, why?”

 “Stay past Brooklyn Bridge,” he said, leaning to whisper, like this was a secret not to be squandered. “Sometimes you see places that aren’t really there.”

\---

Nine abandoned stations lie lost in the New York subway, but in a sense, they have always been found. By Met Transit Museum members, or graffiti artists, or teenagers looking for a place to shoot up. Never quite lost entirely, unlike the twelve more stations that exist, smattered beneath the great city like sparse beads on a string.

Raw, untouched stations with empty steel benches and glittering silver tracks. Bright tiles and stone walls thrum in anticipation for crowds that will never come, blue shadows pool on the un-walked platforms.

The Trains come, though, as they always have—giant glimmering beasts spitting steam and keening whistles, rolling into the stations with a screech of breaks, sparks flying where the wheels mate with the tracks.

Look how their doors open, seeking passengers.

Above ground, employees at restaurants and Pay-O-Matics wonder about the vibrations that set their furniture ringing. There are some theories, but nothing quite close to the truth.

\---

New York hit Jared like a great deluge, bit at him with its grey city teeth, until he was barely hanging on anymore—sharing a room with a hooker, living on measly paychecks from second-tier publishers, working shifts at an East 149th Kwik Copy store.

But mainly?  _Not_ writing his stalled novel. Not at all.

“You’re like a ghost,” said Gen, whenever she came by to chat about her Broadway exploits. “You should get out more.”

Jared was, in fact, starting to feel a lot like a ghost himself. Sometimes he haunted Prospect Park. Sometimes he haunted the streets. Sometimes he haunted his beat-up Mac, looking for words that refused to come. Sometimes, Chad— the guy living a floor above, a film studies major without a buck to his name—invited Jared to haunt _him_. 

Chad was how Jared ended up at The Lost Circle.

Held at an unused subway station only accessible on foot through dank, drippy tunnels, The Lost Circle held red-band screenings of horror films long lost to the general population. It drew a strange crowd—movie buffs, goth-scene kids, art critics with a dark side. Lots of free booze all around. Also weird sex, if you were into ritualistic S&M and that kind of stuff.

Jared went to see if the illicit pleasures of this deep dark corner of the city’s underbelly could kick his muse into gear. What happened instead was that he got really stupidly drunk— spooked by a French film whose plot was just 90-minutes of deliriously executed murder— and found himself wandering the tunnels at the wee hours of the morning.

He’d likely have ended up smeared on the tracks like Turkish delight if he hadn’t found the _other_ station.

The one that didn’t exist.

And at 2:30 on a rainy Tuesday morning, a 6 Train That Didn’t Exist stopped for Jared.

\---

The first time, he _stumbled_  in. Didn’t have a ticket; couldn’t care less. He would have curled up and gone to sleep right on the floor if the overall <i> _weirdness_ </i> of the train didn’t catch him by surprise.

It was too _clean_ , to start with. Bright, like someone’s idea of a train rather than the real thing. The poles looked like solid silver, and no one told him in a steel-wool voice what the next station would be. The walls seemed to undulate, and if he looked too closely at the floor, he could see gears under there, racks and pinions, the spark and slam of metal against metal as the train sped into the night. There were people— _strange_  people—a  willowy woman tall as the carriage, a man in Arabic garb, a girl in a Wee Willie Winkie gown holding a guitar. No one made eye-contact. No conversations broke the silence. At the far end of the car, a lady in a lacquered mask sat alone, elaborate Japanese tea-set balanced on her lap.

Jared sat, suddenly, shockingly sober.

Outside, there were only tunnels, only darkness. The window didn’t reflect his face, despite the bright light inside the car. He watched nothingness whip by for what seemed like the longest time.

Presently, Jared sensed a gaze on him. Carl Jung, he thought fuzzily, really had a theory on that. If you stared insistently enough at someone, they would feel your stare. Especially if the stare was at your shoulder-blades, the small of your back, the spot where your neck met your shoulder. Those places were more sensitive— both to attack with a sharp object, and to a stranger’s gaze.

Jared turned his head, quietly, and there was a man a few seats to his left.

His eyes were green, flames in a bottle of Chartreuse. He held a manuscript in his hands, and his fingers were stained with ink.

When he smiled, it was as if he held the answer to every question.

\---

 _Exactly where, and when, the Trains run isn’t an answerable question. They run beneath every city, every century. They cannot be caught, for they are wilder beasts than the tame silver ones that obey the electric whip. They must be_ enticed. _With music, with words. They accept the sweet torment of lost love, the sweeter torment of a lost_ soul. _They accept those who yearn, those who are invisible, those who find the world too sharp._

_They take you in, like mothers, like lovers, but you must feed them._

_Everything that is not food requires feeding, and the Trains are hungry beasts._  

Jared looked up. His eyes hurt from reading, and he’d left his glasses at home. Jensen sat closer to him now, their thighs touching, elbows touching, and something was odd about being so intimate with a stranger he’d just met, but there was magic running under his blood tonight, thin and glowing, and his thoughts didn’t linger.

He turned the page, ran a finger across the paper, and the ink smeared a little—like Jensen had just had this printed, just for him.

The woman in the mask was handing out cups now, and the girl with the guitar was scribbling on her jeans. The movement of her pen swam in his vision. How long had he been reading, anyway?

“… _there are no stops. The Trains do not wait for anyone, nor do they keep anyone from departing,”_  Jensen read for him now, out loud, and his voice had this rough beauty. Like sandpaper and saxophone.

“Really? I could leave right now, if I wanted to?”

Jensen’s face fell. “Of course. If you wanted to…” He trailed off, worried a hole on the knee of his jeans. “ _Do_ you?”

“No! No, ‘course not. I mean—this is—kinda like a Tardis, you know?”  

Jensen didn’t know.

Jared wondered, for a millisecond, whether this was the worst kind of acid trip. God knows those kids back there had enough dope to knock out an entire platoon. But this—this was so far from the things of _his_ imagination, all his tortured heroes and heroines and off-tilt, darkly-lit, frenetic worlds, that Jared couldn’t see how it couldn’t be real.

“I am so glad you are here,” Jensen said, solemnly, like he’d been worried Jared would never make it. “Will you answer a question?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Jensen twisted in his seat, smiled uncertainly. “In _Apokatastasis_ _,_ when Frank and Emmy go down to Montauk—do they ever figure out what Morgan meant? Do they find the boat?”

Jared laughed, shortly. “I don’t know, do I? I haven’t written, _really_ written, in months.”

 “It’s a good story. Don’t you _want_ to know?”

“Fuck, yes.” Jared looked away from him, at the darkness beyond the glass. “But novels are kinda like…the Trains. Wild beasts, sometimes.”

He fell quiet, and the jolting train knocked their knees together again.

Jensen took Jared’s hand in his, hesitant and slow, as if waiting for Jared to hiss and pull away. His fingers left ink smeared on Jared’s, swirls of it so black it wasn’t even a color.

 “Sometimes I think it kills me to write anything. Like I’m ripping out pieces of myself.”

Jensen looked curious, cocking his head finch-like. “Why do you write, then?”

“Makes me feel alive,” Jared mumbled. His skin hurt from the brightness of the lights, his eyes burned. There was an ache in his chest, like something there needed filling, some hole that must be stoppered. It wasn’t new. It seemed like it had always been there—long before Jensen, long before The Lost Circle, perhaps forever. He raised his head again, looked at Jensen, and got a bit lost in his mirror-shard eyes. His hand shook, and all these words ran through his mind, words that he’d been searching for.

“Can I tell you?” Jensen asked, to their linked hands. Their _inked_ hands.

“What?”

“Everything. What happens to Frank and Emmy in Montauk. What Morgan meant. Why you would always have ended up here. Why I was waiting forever. <i> _Everything_ </i> _._ ”

Jensen leaned closer, his breathing in rhythm with the motion of the train. His other hand pressed to the pulse at Jared’s throat, grazed his collarbone, drifted down the front of his shirt. His lips touched the shell of Jared’s ear, bit gently at his earlobe. Jared gaped at him, shocked— then, reckless, manic, he kissed Jensen’s lips, his jaw.

“ _Please.”_

\---

There are ways to get to the 6 Train That Doesn’t Exist.

If you stay past the last stop on Brooklyn Bridge, and if you are the only passenger, a regular train will sometimes drop you off at a station, one of the twelve.

You will need to wait a while if you’re new.

But if the Trains know you, if they have learned you, they will hasten to you like hungry cats to milk.

\---

In the interstices of the 6 Train That Didn’t Exist, an angry wind tried to rip the mating of the carriages apart. It was noisy there from the groans and sighs of the coupling of the carriages. No cool air, only the heated dark of an in-between place, and Jared let Jensen talk— into him, his mouth, his skin.

“Why don’t they ever—,” he rasped, Jensen’s hand in his hair and his mouth on Jared’s throat, and couldn’t remember a time when he _wasn’t_ here, Jensen rocking into him, the blood rushing in his ears to drown out the whistle of the train, “—the other passengers—”

 “Why would they bother? This is only right.”

Jensen was much like the Train-beasts, chimerical, unbound—this coy, biting, kissing thing that Jared felt had to keep here with words, with touch. His teeth were bared against Jared’s skin, and when his hands cupped Jared’s face, his skin was cold as ice. Jared didn’t flinch, and Jensen smiled and shivered in pleasure, slamming them against the closed carriage door, his palm pressed to the small of Jared’s back and radiating coldness. He was still holding his manuscript, and Jared could feel that too, between the carriage door and his body, this whole history of things he didn’t know, and it was magic, and so was their hips, pushing together, the sloppy kisses to his mouth, his shoulder. He moaned as he ground against Jensen, couldn’t harness his breath, felt the train jolt and the handle of the carriage door press painfully to his back, and couldn’t care less.

He said, tormented, as he did every night, “I’ll have to— _have_ to go back—”

Jensen’s hands held his hips firmly, and the manuscript crashed to the ground. Together now, moving towards something, and Jared’s hands clenched on Jensen’s shoulders. The top of his head slammed against the door, left his ears ringing.

Jensen bit his shoulder as their pace broke, and the pain was stunning.

“One day you won’t. I’ll wait for you,” Jensen promised, gasping and breathless, like this all made sense somehow, like this was a<i> _plan_ </i> somehow—a secret boys’ pact or a lovers’ promise to meet at an engraved tree in ten years’ time.

“I’ll _wait.”_  

\---

 When he wasn’t on imaginary trains, Jared chugged coffee and wrote.

His Kwik Copy job abandoned, catching phantom glimpses of green eyes in mirrors, in the reflections of buildings, in his own dreams— he _wrote._

“Eat something. Sleep. _Please_ _,_ ” Gen said, but he barely heard her, couldn’t focus with all the words warring in his mind. Frank and Emmy went down to Montauk. They found the boat. The world was peeled back, revealed. Time turned. _Apokatastasis._  

 Every night, he took a 6 to Brooklyn Bridge, stayed past the last stop, and was dropped off without fail at the station where he was, forever, the only passenger waiting for the Train.

Every morning, he took a 6 back to East 149th, the shape of Jensen’s fingers shadowed in violet on his skin. In the bathroom, he looked at the bruises and found that he was comforted by them, the pain that bloomed when he pressed down.

Dimly, Jared thought sometimes of the _leannan sidhe,_ the fairy lover who whispered like a dark muse, let you blaze like a star, bright, unsurpassable— but only for a short while, before you wasted away. Your soul became his, but you’d love him still— always, always, _amour fou._  

 _I’ll wait_ _,_ promised Jensen, every night. O _ne day you won’t leave._  

\---

FROM the EDITOR’S PREFACE TO _APOKATASTASIS :_  

….. _a few calls to his agent, a couple of emails to me, always asking for extensions on an already long overdue novel. And then a stretch of radio silence following which, this story that you now hold in your hands arrived at my doorstep._

_Always in violent disdain of his own work, I don’t know what Jared thought of this novel, nor will any of us ever know._

_But these are words that came from a dark place, an inspired place. Few have ever gone there, and few ever will._  

 

**Author's Note:**

> written for spnspringfling 2014 on LJ, as a gift for akadougal


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